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Pondering the Pint: Paradise found brewing

Cyril Vidergar

Posted:
03/21/2013 06:22:16 PM MDT

Updated:
03/21/2013 06:23:38 PM MDT

O n March 14, 2013, dawn emerged in Virginia Beach, Va., with the surpassing glory of a new day. Mayor William Sessoms Jr. did not miss the flash on the eastern horizon. Hours later, he gave his State of the City address and announced the new, soon-to-open Green Flash Brewing Company brewery coming to his city. This second brewhouse, built in the same fashion as the Green Flash brewery in San Diego, Calif., marks the higher ascent of craft beer toward a seat of sole dominion.

The nine-acre, 58,000-square-foot facility will employ 40 locals and represent an investment of more than $20 million to bring West Coast beer to the East Coast. It will provide more efficient freighting and fresher beer for the growing thirsts of Southern craft beer fans. At full capacity, the new brewery will produce 100,000 annual barrels, on par with the Green Flash's San Diego production volume, and twice that of the new Brevard, N.C., brewery Oskar Blues opened in 2012. But the numbers are just numbers; it's the rift in the force that carries real significance -- an epic significance for monolithic mass brewers.

In May 2012, heads around Oskar Blues' world-domination table announced a similar plan to serve the rolling hills of North Carolina's Pisgah National Forest with their canned brand of folksy charm. Seven months later, not only did OB open a 30,000-square-foot satellite brewery in the nearby town of Brevard, but a restaurant and a groundbreaking brewers education program, the "Oskar Blues Brew School," at local Blue Ridge Community College as well.

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In looking east, both breweries noted that more than 30 percent of their sales come from east of the Mississippi. Both are sold in more than 30 states today, and Green Flash is aiming to increase its European exports with the new operation. As the light of craft brewing grows, the stars of 20th Century beer are hiding their diminished faces, and cursing the dawn in remembrance of the state of market monopoly they have lost.

John Milton likely did not realize, in penning Paradise Lost, Book Four, that his epic poem would capture the very emotion of that dawn last Thursday, that is, the dawn not as seen by Mayor Sessoms, but by the mega-breweries:

"O thou that with surpassing Glory crownd,

Look'st from thy sole Dominion like the God

Of this new World; at whose sight all the Starrs

Hide thir diminisht heads; to thee I call,

But with no friendly voice, and add thy name

O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beamsThat bring to my remembrance from what state

I fell, how glorious once above thy Spheare;

Till Pride and worse Ambition threw me down

Warring in Heav'n against Heav'ns matchless King."

These words were originally written to express the angst Lucifer felt upon escaping the Underworld and seeing the sun shining on Earth. Yet, those words could also be the very "unfriendly" inner voice of many a yester-beer executive. Craft brewing has given beer a fresh face and returned it to a source of community pride. In their battles to corner the market, the mega-breweries let pride and ambition cloud their vision.

The gem driving craft beer's success lies in a simple principle: Listen to your customers; give them what they want. The race to homogeneous American Pale Lager built dynasties on the fallacy that consumers could be told what to want. The craft beer movement puts the consumer back on the throne.

Craft brewing is also grounded in collaboration within and between communities. OB's commitment to community and its art, from Longmont to North Carolina, recently won it Beverage World Magazine's inaugural "Craft Brewer of the Year award." Left Hand Brewing Co., which recently formed a charitable foundation, also regularly holds local fund-raisers in Longmont (including Hops and Handrails on Saturday, March 23). Green Flash in similar fashion also embraced its surrogate hometown of Virginia Beach, creating a local brewers' credit with White Labs yeast to spur innovation in southeastern brewing.

These and those craft beer satellites still in planning serve to further advance the new epic of the craft beer nation, as full-flavor beer rises toward the zenith, and toward Paradise Found.

Cyril Vidergar is a business and brewing law attorney based in Longmont. He can be reached at beerscoop@

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